This is a great game and I liked it enough to try something else. The first party I had was 2 mul knights 2 clerics. I wanted to start over with 1 mul knight like before, with subbing in a knight who uses ranged weapons, along with 2 clerics like before. So 1 marksman this time.

Will this be feasible and should I go and use the composite longbow with high strength or are any other ranged weapons good with strength bonuses? I had one gripe with 2 melee and that is random encounters the enemies are so far away. It takes a while and when you finally get over there, the battle just takes longer. This would work if I had 1 marksman with high dexterity. Has anyone used finished the game without major problems with an archer instead of 2 warriors?

I Finished Game-Starting over with Another Party

Why do you avoid wizards? They're fun, and they can haste your guys to make distances be far shorter.

My first party was 2 knights(1 was very melee focused, the other was mostly ranged) and 1 cleric and wizard. Frankly, the archer type knight was much less effective, but had some benefits, like hitting enemy mages to death from a distance and such. I also designed my bows pretty different from melee weapons, for melee I usually went with max damage potential, for bows I favoured the more tricksy enchantments. In theory, this was because my bow character had a better to-hit chance with the bow than melee. In practice, the difference wasn't so big that it truly mattered(especially with my primary melee guy hitting with greater accuracy in the end anyway due to large strength).

As for which weapon, the composite longbow is easily the best choice(if you craft your own weapons, that is). If you decide to only loot and buy weapons, then the other ranged weapons are more viable.

All in all it's not that big of a deal. Has some pros and some cons, and while(IMO) somewhat weaker, it's good enough to do okay. Now, if you had 2 archers and no melee guys, that'd be a problem, I'd guess.